Thursday, March 7, 2013

Finding balance

So I've been trying to integrate new literature into my life as much as I've been integrating the television shows.

It's a shameful fact I watch a lot of TV. I let my DVR grow and grow and then watch hours at a time. I want to balance this with a healthy amount of reading.

So far this year I have read three books. I wanted to make it a two book a month average, so clearly I am behind a bit. In January I read "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" by Mindy Kaling within a few short days. I instantly wanted to meet Mindy and be her best friend, but I'll just have to settle "The Mindy Project" on television.

Then I picked up "The Age of Miracles" by Karen Thompson Walker, which was an unusual pick up for me. I truly enjoyed a coming of age story told as the Earth was beginning to end. Such an interesting concept and I really loved the narration.

I just finished "A Grown Up Kind of Pretty" by Joshilyn Jackson. This was another of those stories told from three perspectives of women, a grandmother, mother and daughter, all 15 years apart from one another. I really enjoyed this book, though the chapters were rather lengthy so I found myself staying up later than I had planned on just so I could finish a chapter. Particularly interesting about this book were the chapters told from the perspective of one of the characters who had suffered a stroke and how she tried to communicate when she couldn't.

On the TV front, I tore through Netflix's House of Cards and absolutely loved Kevin Spacey as the creepy power-hungry politician ruling the evil world of Washington DC.

Now I am going through The West Wing, which I never watched when it was originally on television. I just eat up good political drama. In another world, in another life, I think I was meant to flourish in a political environment.

Also to balance all the TV watching and the reading, I'd want to write more blog posts. So I'm going to try to post as often as I can (in a perfect world, that would be every day). I want to create a space for me to find my own voice in writing. Even though I do it for a living, it is never really what I want to write or what I am going through.